Simon Gleave

🔵Manchester City now amongst the 3 most likely teams to be relegated from the Premier League. 52% chance of this. For comparative purposes, Arsenal's chance is 0.05%, around 1000 times smaller. The market expects a big points deduction.

22h

🧮Manchester City, Brighton and Hull City are performing better than their match odds suggest. 🔴Manchester United, Nottingham Forest and Sunderland underperforming their odds. #MCFC #MUFC #BHAFC #NFFC #HCAFC #SAFC #PremierLeague

This is also good on Forest.

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This is pretty insightful on Nottingham Forest I think. Most fans will probably think that refs have cost them 3-5 points though.

Jon Salt@jon-salt.bsky.social

The team isn't finishing chances and I think it's gotten in their heads, so they are going tight when the chances arrive and it's become a self fulfilling problem. So much of the play is good. They just need to get a result and things will roll. Also referees have cost us at least 3-5 points.

What is going on with Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth ("should" be much higher) and Newcastle ("should" be much lower). Is this (bad) luck or something else? From what I have seen of Forest, they are shocking in front of goal - low percentage on target, too many big chances being missed. Thoughts?

The lack of jeopardy in the #ChampionsLeague is even more extreme this season. The big 7 clubs, all with squads worth over €1 billion, look like going straight through. At the bottom it isn't much better with 9 of the 12 most likely teams to go out pre-tournament still favourites to be eliminated

Stuttgart had a nice gentle start to the Champions League. One of the 9 teams with 2 wins (Real Madrid) has played 2 matches against teams from the top 2 draw pots. 4 of the 8 teams with 0 points have. Slavia Prague - 0 points from 2 weakest opponents - can probably forget about progressing.

Andrew Beasley@andrewbeasleyfootball.com

Very early days but the Champions League table begins to take shape. Real Madrid the only team with two wins against teams from the top two pots. Tougher tests to come for Stuttgart. Inter will probably be fine, Slavia Prague rather less so.

🔵During the Premier League's hiatus, Manchester City went from 10th favourites (6-7% chance) to 4th favourites (38%) for relegation after being found guilty of breaking financial rules by the Premier League. As a comparison, Arsenal's chance of going down before today's matches was 0.07%. #MCFC

Arsenal's xG is better than this at 6th highest in the Premier League BUT combined with their league best xG against, they are number 1 when combinining offensive and defensive expected goals. Leeds United are 3rd on this measure. #ARSLEE

Orbinho@orbinho.bsky.social

Arsenal have attempted 65 shots so far, which ranks them 13th for total efforts at goal. #ARSLEE

Simon Gleave reposted

Orbinho

@orbinho.bsky.social

41% of the xG generated by Leeds so far this season has come from set pieces – the highest proportion in the top flight. #ARSLEE

The Premier League is back Hull City overperforming the most Tottenham Hotspur the biggest underperformers Bournemouth bang on pre-season expectation

Simon Gleave@simongleave.bsky.social

❓Which Premier League club has had the biggest improvement in its expected points compared to pre-season? ❓Which club has had the biggest decline? ⁉️Which club, and there is only one, still has the same expected points as it did pre-season?

The best xG differences during the international window unsurprisingly correlates well with the Nations League A teams who are doing well. As always, those that buck the trend are the interesting ones. Germany for example (or Greece as they are overperforming in the same group). #NationsLeague

7 goals 6.43 xG 19 shots 34% - chance of the average shot being scored That was England last Saturday. Can they do something similar tonight? Three days ago, England created a large number of big chances against Croatia, 11 with at least 20% chance of a goal. #ENGCZE

The "England Hype & Despair Cycle" as featured in the book Soccernomics (@sszy.bsky.social, @simonkuper.bsky.social) This time, it has not taken very long at all to go from this......

......to at least the start of this. Or is it real this time? Do we dare to dream?

In all seriousness though, England are a very good team. They were before the last World Cup and they are now. Something has changed in recent years, as illustrated by the team's consistent top-4 world ranking, something which hasn't happened since the early 1970s.

Simon Gleave reposted

John Muller

@johnspacemuller.com

Replying to @johnspacemuller.com

Cherki makes it look easy but it's all in the weight and timing of the pass

Gela Merabishvili@gmerabishv.bsky.social

Again unbelievable vision by Cherki

Simon Gleave reposted

John Muller

@johnspacemuller.com

Another incredible assist for Rayan Cherki wow

I had a go at subjectively estimating xG for Germany's chances in the highlights of last night's match. Mine may be more accurate sometimes and other times off. The commentator felt that Gnabry & Woltemade's big chances should have been scored. In reality, they are less than 50/50.

@cweatherspoon.bsky.social

*Totals only for those chances For me, one of the best insights of expected goals is that one-on-one opportunities generally have somewhere between 25% and 50% chance of being scored. This is very different to the perception of many people whose views almost ignore the presence of a goalkeeper.

Simon Gleave reposted

Chris Weatherspoon

Many examples of Sir Alex Ferguson's genius but if we're to boil it down to money (because, well, everything else is these days) perhaps his most impressive achievement is in his final 10 years #MUFC were not the highest wage payers in PL once, yet they won the league five times

🇩🇪Germany last night 32 shots (vs 1) 5 goal attempts with at least 25% of scoring 3.81 xG (vs 0.01) All of Serbia's opponents have had 40+ touches in their box but Germany created more and bigger chances. Klopp's team also shut Serbia out completely. #GERSER #NationsLeague

#NationsLeague A2 is the first group to become a bit more interesting. The two quarter-final spots are now a three-horse race ahead of leaders Greece hosting the Netherlands this evening. #GRENED

Trent Alexander-Arnold became right back number 9 for Thomas Tuchel's England last night. Only Reece James and Jarell Quansah have started at right back more than twice during Tuchel's reign. Will Alexander-Arnold join them by starting the next two or will he be replaced? #CROENG

Inspired by @statman-jon.bsky.social's post about the 400m hurdles becoming more competitive, I wanted to know more. When Ed Moses broke the 400m hurdles world record back in 1980, his time was only 2% slower than the 400m. This rose to 5% but is now back to ~3%. So, what has changed?

bbc.comPremier League: Is top-flight possession football on way out?Only 36% of teams with more than 60% possession have won this season in the Premier League. BBC Sport looks at why?

I thought that this was interesting but, as I pointed out last week, only one team recording less than 50% possession in a season has finished in the Premier League's top-6 since Leicester were champions in 2016. That's 59 out of 60 top-6 teams using possesion football. www.bbc.com/sport/footba...

If you missed my post on this, it is linked below: bsky.app/profile/simo...

Simon Gleave@simongleave.bsky.social

Clubs with less than 50% possession in the Premier League usually finish 7th to 10th at best. West Ham (6th in 2020/2021) were the only team since 2016 to finish in the top-6 with less than 50% possession. Leicester City won the league in 2016 with 43% possession. #Brentfordfc #LUFC #EFC #HCAFC

🧵I am a fan of expected goals but I'm surprised that there isn't really any discussion when public estimates are wrong. An example of this occurred during Norway v Portugal last night. Ramos takes a shot from distance which has a 4% chance of being scored, rising to 6% as it is on target. 1/

However, the actual situation is very different to the average long range shot from this position. As the screenshot shows, Gonçalo Ramos has received the ball from Norway keeper Myland and only has to chip the ball over him to score. This has a VERY high chance of going in. Estimates? 2/

When Gonçalo Ramos gets his shot on target, it can only be a goal so the post-shot xG is actually 1. His shot is a certain goal. Expected goals are very useful but it is important to be aware when estimates are wrong - as in this situation. 3//

Great fact from Jurryt here. Ruben van Bommel completes the first case of three generations of the same family to play for the Netherlands after his father Mark and grandfather Bert van Marwijk. omments nit-pick that Van Marwijk isn't RvB's paternal grandfather. Who cares about that?

Jurryt van de Vooren@jurryt.bsky.social

Voor zover ik kan achterhalen kan Ruben van Bommel de eerste speler van het Nederlands elftal worden van wie ook de vader (Mark van Bommel) en grootvader (Bert van Marwijk) in Oranje speelden. Voor de eerste keer zijn dan drie generaties achter elkaar international.

Portugal, Spain, France and the Netherlands are the top-4 in my all-time Nations League ranking. 8 teams have been in League A in every Nations League. 4 of this year's League A teams - Serbia, Norway, Türkiye & Greece - have spent at least one Nations League in League C. #NationsLeague

Nations League A groups are rather unbalanced. 3 of Europe's top-8, Spain, England - both top-4 - and Croatia, together in Group A3 so at least one will end up in relegation play-offs. Portugal the only top-8 ranked team in Group A4. None of Europe's top-4 teams in Group A2. #NationsLeague

Why should anyone expect Manchester United to finish in the top-4 if their wage bill is so far behind four other teams? Over multiple seasons - required to minimise things like luck - the relationship between quality of resources and performance is very strong.

Chris Weatherspoon@cweatherspoon.bsky.social

#MUFC wage bill was £302m in 2025-26, a six-year low Compared to 2024-25 wage bills (as no other clubs have released 25-26 figs), United wage bill last season was £47m behind Arsenal, £74m behind Chelsea, £128m behind Liverpool, £168m behind Man City More on @theathleticfc.bsky.social soon

theguardian.comLong-range hits and goals galore: inside the Premier League’s return to chaos | Andrew BeasleyTeams are running further and set-piece strikes are in decline as end-to-end football takes over the Premier League

Great stuff as always from Andrew. I had wondered whether long range goals were up so it is great to see some numbers on that here. Well worth a follow and obviously his articles are a must-read for anyone who is interested in my stuff.

Andrew Beasley@andrewbeasleyfootball.com

'Goals are up, but so are the proportion of matches that are drawn, with those won by two or more in decline. Teams are slugging it out, back and forth. You attack, we counter, and everyone runs further as a result.' On the data from the first five weeks:

Zooming in on Hull City's 33% possession figure, no team in the last 10 seasons has ended a campaign with a possession number that low. West Bromwich Albion finished 10th with 37% possession in 2016/2017. 4 of the 8 teams with less than 40% possession in the last 10 seasons avoided relegation

21 Sept

Brentford are fielding the most valuable team outside the #PremierLeague Big-6 teams this season. Incredible really. Also, the gap in playing team value from Manchester City to the rest of the Premier League is enormous. #BrentfordFC #MCFC

22 Sept

And this is the other end of the same table. Brighton, Leeds, Everton and Hull outperforming the resources they have at their disposal. #BHAFC #LUFC #EFC #HCAFC

17 Sept

Manchester United best #EuropaLeague team of the past 10 years? I am playing around with a points system to judge European performance - based on how far each team gets. I'll combine all European competitions when I am happy with it.

16 Sept

Lots of disagreement between odds and statistical models on which teams are going straight through to the #EuropaLeague last-16. #UEL

16 Sept

Coventry City above Aston Villa and Newcastle United when looking at the quality of chances created and conceded to date. Four games is a bit early but it will be interesting to look at this in about six weeks or so to see if we can unpick the reasons why some teams don't fit.

16 Sept

Why are Union St. Gilloise odds of 8 to finish in the top-8 of this season's Europa League group? Are they fielding their youth team in the competition or something? Anyone know?